


All These Gliding Ghosts

by shinobi93



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Ghosts, Magical Realism, Underworld, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 20:16:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinobi93/pseuds/shinobi93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the ghost of the old king appears at the castle, he is not alone. Soon, it is down to Horatio and Ophelia to stop these spirits from terrorising Hamlet and Elsinore, but the stakes are high and tragedy has a strange way of defying anyone's efforts to the contrary.</p><p>Still, they will battle on regardless, even if it takes them to the edges of their sanity…or the Underworld.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All These Gliding Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [adiva_calandia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adiva_calandia/gifts).



> My attempt at vaguely magical realist Hamlet. Also, I wanted to give Ophelia some relative power within that. All the ghost stuff is entirely made up for the purposes of this fic, although of course words having power is no new concept. Apologies to Shakespeare for sticking bits of his dialogue amongst my words.
> 
> Warnings for character death and references to suicide that are in keeping with the play canon, so as long as you know what happens in Hamlet, you know what these will be. I think it's slightly more uplifting than the play, however.
> 
> (the title is from Julius Caesar, I.iii)

The bitter chill of night, the unfamiliar country: nothing helps Horatio believe the officers’ words, their stuttering tale of an apparition in the dark. A fantasy to relive the tedium of the watch. Still, he appeases Marcellus and stands in the cold, not long in Elsinore, waiting for a ghost he believes he’ll never see. Enter ghost. He is struck, struck by surprise and fear, and charges it to speak, to reveal the secret of its appearance. The ghost is not amenable. A king, even a dead one, will not listen to him. Horatio talks of omens, of Rome: scholarly yet nervous. Spirits are not within his usual realms of knowledge.

The cock’s crow saves him from uncertainty.

Time to see Hamlet. His father’s ghost provides a fitting excuse. Poor servant becomes a good friend, a friend visiting from Wittenberg under slim pretenses. Hamlet sees the image of his father; Horatio sees his ghostly form. They always have differences. Horatio tells his story, calmly, answering questions as best he can. Hamlet flits around, unsteady and agitated. Proof is needed; a plan is made. Still, Horatio feels something is not quite right. Ghosts, he thinks disbelievingly, an actual ghost. Hamlet must be shown.

Biting cold. Hamlet shivers and Horatio wonders what it was like to grow up in this air that nips like a small dog. Up steps the ghost, glides in fact, and beckons Hamlet forward. Father and son. Horatio waits, Marcellus nearby not seeming affected by the chill. They move after Hamlet. Lights flicker in the gloom and Horatio’s head snaps round, already on edge. Orbs, omens of something. Maybe he wasn’t so wrong with Rome. Flashes of movement. Marcellus seems to have seen nothing. Hamlet and the ghost, he reminds himself, focus on that. They reach Hamlet, but the ghost of the old king is vanished. Again. Wonderful, Hamlet calls out with a hysterical tone, wonderful news. Horatio steps closer involuntarily, the urge to protect. As they swear to secrecy, Horatio spots another figure lurking in the gloom, another apparition, but this not the old king: a small girl in cloak and dress.

The ghost is now in the plural. Ghosts. Horatio is less taken aback than he might have expected. He shakes, but that could be the cold. And when Hamlet tells him of more things in heaven and earth, he wants to laugh, because that has been proven to him on this freezing night in Elsinore. No one must know.

-

Ophelia sits sewing: it is useful, and it is reassuringly ordered. Stitch after stitch. Her father’s and brother’s words echo round her head. Fear it. Fear him. Fear the world we live in. She shakes her head. There is enough to fear without Laertes’ misunderstandings. A noise sounds from outside; she doesn’t drop a stitch. Tugs at a loose thread, and then he appears, Hamlet, in her doorway, half his attire trailing behind him. Pale as his shirt. Ophelia starts, but hides it with a pull at her needle. He looks as if he’s dragged his way out of Hell itself.

Hamlet grabs her wrist; she waits, unmoving, at first because he seems frantic and she doesn’t want to startle him, then because she sees something over his shoulder. Movement. Wisps of grey light form themselves into figures and disappear again. She gasps, but Hamlet is distracted, watching her face as if it were a painting not a living human. The spirits pass around her chamber; one in particular keeps returning and disappearing, like it is waiting for her companion to leave. After a while, she shakes her arm lightly, and Hamlet sighs, entirely unaware of their spirit company. Ophelia wonders if it is the work of these spirits that make him notice nothing but her face.

Leaving, he continues to gaze on her. Ophelia, however, is watching the ghosts, for that is what she sees they are. All but the most persistent one follow Hamlet from the room. This wayward ghost hovers, flickering, then without warning a cold wind blows and it glides toward a table, knocking the contents crashing to the floor. She drops her embroidery and raises her hands in defence. The spirit does not react, but glows more dimly, turning from a human form to a collection of misty lights.

A knock at her open door. She expects Hamlet, but does not see him. Instead, a smaller man, Hamlet’s age, with a worried expression. He stares straight at the ghost, his eyes narrowing. Ophelia is glad to know she is not the only person who can see them.

‘Horatio,’ the man says.

‘Ophelia,’ she responds.

‘I have been told-’ they both start, then another crash stops them. Introductions are over, the ghost says. She stands, and they face the ghost, its silvery figure flickering in and out of view like candlelight. Ophelia glances at Horatio: he is shaking, more nervous than her, but his jaw is set in determination. Without this proof of the ghost’s existence, she might believe it untrue, what her father might call her womanish imagination. She never believes him when he says that, but she cannot argue.

‘Be-’ stutters Horatio. ‘Begone-’

‘Begone, thou apparition,’ she completes. They are inventing on the spot.

‘Ghost,’ hisses Horatio.

The ghost glows brightly, then peters out into darkness. Gone. This one could be banished by words alone, she thinks. It barely seems possible. Horatio stands, immobile. Ophelia steps back towards her chair and picks up her sewing. It will only need a stitch or two to save it.

They talk, about the ghost and about Hamlet. Horatio warns her not to speak of what they’ve seen, and she wants to laugh aloud. If she said a word, she’d be dismissed as a foolish woman or, worse, locked in her room until the fit was over. She resolves, however, to tell her own version of the story, to keep Hamlet under watch because Horatio seems hesitant to explain his friend’s strange behaviour. Madness or not, there are ghosts about.

-

Wittenberg did not prepare him for this, not truly. Horatio nods at Ophelia as they meet, once again, to follow Hamlet and watch out for the spirits that are getting ever more numerous. Guardian angels. They share their lives as they go; Horatio begins to see how a young girl ruled by her father and brother could become protective of the erratic student Horatio himself also protects. She has few people to watch over. Her and Hamlet do not love one another, may have thought so for a brief moment but time passed, yet she has been keeping up the pretense to her father because they need some excuse, for Hamlet’s behaviour, and for hers. Chasing ghosts does not always go unnoticed. She feigns agitation due to misplaced affections, not underworldly apparitions. Horatio cannot help but be impressed.

Whilst Hamlet talks in riddles to others, they clear the shadows of their ghosts. Horatio wracks his brain for all he has learnt, every single word that might banish a ghost, but often it is Ophelia who hits upon the correct sentences to defeat the spirits: it turns out, it depends on the power and intent of the spirit in question. Some are almost friendly, or barely able to appear as bright as candle flame, but others are more malevolent.

Horatio cannot sleep easily. Every time he opens his eyes, he expects to see more apparitions. Sometimes he does; sometimes he doesn’t. The ghosts spread further, incensed by others’ progress. Their adversaries, determined as they are, cannot be everywhere, all at once.

Today, a particular ghost has an nasty streak that is terrorising the servants in the castle, unaware that the underworld has been opened briefly and its spirits converging upon the Danish prince. A tragedy difficult to be conceived. Ophelia mutters chants under her breath, searching for the words, the right combination of sounds. Latin is added by Horatio, snippets from Virgil’s underworld scene in the hope that might be powerful. He’s not sure ghosts can be beaten by scholarly pretensions, however.

Creeping down a corridor. Ophelia on edge as they heard her father earlier, talking to Hamlet and to the King and Queen. Instead, the sounds are Hamlet, and Horatio catches a snatch of his words before they move on after the ghost.

‘-what is the quintessence of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman neither-’

If only you knew what man and woman, one man and one woman, are doing for you, Horatio thinks. Battling ghosts like knights of yore. Still, he needs no recognition. Fighting shadows in the gloom: a most wonderful way to be silently loyal. He speeds up, boots tapping on the stone floor, and finds Ophelia saving a scrawny young player from their ghostly nemesis of the hour.

‘And in his grave rain’d many a tear,’ she sings out, eyes shining, and the ghost slowly fades away. A melancholy spirit, an unloved spirit. Everybody wants something, even the dead.

-

Silent until she is addressed, Ophelia waits in front of the King, the Queen and her father. Those jester friends of Hamlet leave and they focus upon her. Wishing she is the cause of Hamlet’s madness. Why would she want to be the cause of a man’s insanity? Politely, she nods, agrees, follows the role they are piling upon her current one. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches the spirits. Circling the room like vultures, invisible to all but her.

Pretending to read. Mouthing sentences at the ghosts, who whirl around the newly entered Hamlet and then flock to her, the girl in the corner with the book. One disappears at Hamlet’s ‘to die - to sleep’: a spirit of bad dreams, perhaps.

‘The undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns-’

The words send a chill down Ophelia’s spine as she pretends not to hear. These travellers have returned, albeit changed from their descent to the new country, the unknown beyond. She cannot think it so awful there, though they return so angry, so despising of the living.

Hamlet turns his attention to her. She replies, trying to find the right words for him as she does the ghosts. The truth was known, but still, when he says ‘I loved you not’ with such plain relish, such distracted honesty, she feels a darting arrow pierce her nonetheless. Words making her feel more alone. And then, as Hamlet talks whether truthfully or in feigned madness, the spirits edge closer, creating a chill that makes Hamlet visibly shiver as she does.

‘O, help him, you sweet heavens!’ she exclaims, unsure if it will even work. Appealing under direct threat.

‘O heavenly powers, restore him!’ Restore him to safety, protection from the ghosts, because she is doing this for all of Elsinore and Hamlet must not be defeated so easily, so futilely, by spirits according to Horatio accidentally summoned with the appearance of the old King’s ghost. Hamlet leaves, unimpeded, and she speaks with emotion, with force, as the ghosts vanish and her father and the King, she knows, listen on. And in her final lines, she talks doubly, honest and false, for they all underestimate the power of her words.

‘O, woe is me to have seen what I have seen, see what I see!’

-

Horatio rushes in, newly banished ghosts fleeing his mind as quickly as they fled this realm at the sight of anxious Hamlet, frantic Hamlet. Here, sweet lord, as he always is. And then, self-professedly without flattery, his friend notices that fact of Horatio’s existence, appreciates it when Horatio never expected to hear anything in words. Not many, but brevity has its time. Of course Horatio will help, of course he will do as Hamlet says; why else would he be in this cold country, be away from Wittenberg and the old books that otherwise warrant his attention?

All the spirits in the underworld couldn’t stop him following Hamlet’s request.

But as he watches, the King’s expression and the Queen’s distaste and Hamlet’s restlessness and Ophelia’s placating smile, he sees it play out as if these are the players upon the stage and the players the true audience, and it is clear to him that it will not end well. The glistening grey of the spirits lingers on the edges of his vision and their influence, whatever it is, cannot help the frantic state everyone is being drawn to. Horatio does not know what to do, if he can do anything, but try and stop the ghosts and hope that is enough. It will be, he pleads with the universe. It will be.

-

Nobody knows what to say to Ophelia. She can feel it, in their hollow words, but she is distracted by thoughts of her father, and trying to distract herself from this by concentrating on the spirits still threatening to break any peace in Elsinore even further. Polonius is dead; Hamlet gone. Without Laertes, still in France, she is a lost girl in this world, fighting to stop it being overtaken by the malevolent forces so few are aware of.

Horatio and her meet, once again. This time, they do not target a ghost or two. Walking outside in the cold wind, Horatio tries to offer consolation, but he doesn’t know her, doesn’t know what to say. He fumbles with words. Tears fall down her cheeks and she feels a spirit swoop around her, adding to the chill. Impossible to tell how much effect they can have on a person’s emotions. Maybe she would know if she had listened to her father’s long, rambling stories when she was a small girl; instead, she spent the time in her imagination, the sound of her voice serving like a blanket.

A ghost glides past and she bats at it with her hand, techniques momentarily forgotten as she remembers her father, thinks of him and Laertes trying to protect her from everything, whether she needed protecting or not. Mist and apparitions and icy wind: reality is relative right now.

Standing under shelter, Horatio tells her he might have a solution. To the ghosts, not to everything, but she never expected the latter. Ophelia nods, face hardened. She will do whatever it takes: Horatio’s apprehension suggests his option will not be simple. He speaks in whispers, despite the howls of the weather. Solemn and studious. According to books he found, mysterious books he feel no need to elaborate upon any further, an infestation of spirits such as theirs requires a drastic measure: a traveller to the underworld, without a return journey, to speak the correct words and bring them all back to their afterlife home. Otherwise, they will be fighting vengeful and mischievous spirits for the rest of their days, most likely.

Hard news. They walk back in silence, neither passing judgement. Ophelia can barely see, but she does not pause until she collapses down in her chamber. She sits, thinking, waiting, ignoring the spirits that swarm around her, knocking down her possessions.

Knocking. She rises and opens the door to Horatio, who stands in the doorway with a furrowed brow.

‘I will do it.’

She says nothing else. The plan is formed, but Horatio need not know it. She will tell what he needs to know: he must play his part too, whilst she succumbs willingly to the spirits’ power, confusing everyone as she goes. Imagination will assist, as will the sense of unreality that has been dogging her for days.

Playing to the court of the King and Queen. She sings, raves, and lets the ghosts whirl around her head in agreement. They sense something is wrong, she is sure. Horatio follows on her heels like a keeper. It is unlikely he is feigning his worried expression. Laertes has come, but she cannot change the course now: she is protecting him too, from the spirits. Protecting her brother for once. She sings to the ghosts, a hypnotising warning if only they’d listen.

‘No, no, he is dead:  
Go to thy death-bed:  
He will never come again.’

Passing out of the room like an apparition. All is going as planned, though she almost doesn’t know it, her resolve to the role is so great. Horatio collides with her, short of breath. Hamlet needs him. She nods; best he is not present for the ending of this plot, him being the one choosing to live on. She will trick them all, people and ghosts alike. There is nothing greater she can do, for the people who will be saved and the city, the country even, that will be protected.

Horatio leaves, and she gathers more flowers to replace those she gave out earlier: part of the ritual. Time for Ophelia to control her own fate, for no one else will fight for such a stake.

-

A graveyard: the last place Horatio wants to be right now. His head jerks at the slightest movement, certain it is a ghost come to prove Ophelia has failed. He doesn’t even know if she’s done it yet, but is locked on the edge of paranoia just in case. Hamlet talks on, reflective, and Horatio tries to reply suitably in this little land of death. The skull laughs at him and his preoccupation.

Funeral ceremony. Hamlet grabs at him and pulls him to retire. Horatio knows who it must be, the second he sees Laertes. She has done it: fought with the ghosts, tricked the court, and descended to pay the final blow. The Queen throws flowers, but Horatio half-expects a spirit to appear and blow them away. Distracted, he does not stop Hamlet advancing on Laertes. He grabs at thin air, a second too late. Coincidences of time. The King tells Horatio to wait on Hamlet, on the mad, disjointed prince as they see him, and Horatio holds back a hysterical laugh. Of course he shall wait on Hamlet: he will fight for the sweet prince as long as he can, as he has since he arrived in Elsinore. His focus through the mists, real and ghostly.

Hamlet tells his story to Horatio, but Horatio does not tell his. There is too much on Hamlet’s mind right now, he reasons. Plenty of time to do that later, once the threat is over. Safely in Wittenberg, perhaps, or elsewhere. Away from this place of haunted memories. There are not words enough right now. Hamlet still incensed, and then the bet comes.

‘You will lose this wager, my lord,’ he warns desperately. It is futile. He cannot get across how this must not happen, how tensions were meant to be calmed, not rise. Free from the ghosts’ influence: it is not enough, it seems.

Their fencing match unfolds like a masque, exaggerated actions before Horatio’s eyes. He thinks of Ophelia and how she fares, fared, in the underworld. It must be cutthroat there too. His hands shake; his breath is held. Grim reality without spirit interference. Hamlet and Laertes wound one another and Horatio is relieved that it is not worse, not yet, but then the Queen falls, poison and treachery, and he realises all is unraveling. The court has been poisoned without the help of anything but men.

Laertes falls, speaks the words that condemn Hamlet and Horatio’s hopes. Poison all round. Hamlet lunges, stabs his uncle, and Horatio dives forward in his own movement as his friend sways on his feet, catches him as he falls. No, he wants to yell, this wasn’t supposed to happen. It was supposed to work out. The cup dances in front of his vision with its tempting contents. He reaches out, forgetting all, forgetting what Ophelia did and what they were preventing and everything but the fact that Hamlet is dying in his arms.

‘O good Horatio-’

Hamlet’s words, his request, sound in Horatio’s ears, and he cannot argue against them: the tale must be told, the words must be chosen right because Horatio has seen the power of words for good and evil. To tell Hamlet’s story, to remember Ophelia’s actions. Horatio has purpose. He runs his fingers across Hamlet’s brow, trying to send life through the contact. I defeated ghosts for thee, he screams in his head, so you cannot die now. Pointless. Silence comes too soon.

‘-good night, sweet prince;’ he murmurs, for someone must wish him well. Someone must watch over Elsinore and ascertain that the ghosts are truly gone, after all that has been done. Someone must remember what can happen when the living and dead cross paths. Horatio could not stop the tragedy, but he can tell the story.

* * *  
* * *

‘Your looks haunt me not,’ laughs Ophelia, waving a spectral hand at the spirits trying to threaten her. Silver only accents her looks, she thinks. Her father always warned her that her looks could bring her trouble, on his long rambles of the dangers of the world. A different world now. The underworld suits her: here she has found her place, her power. The words to battle spirits come easier to her tongue and it did not take her long to recall the ghosts from Elsinore. That power attained, she did not stop. Why would should, rising the ranks to queen of the spirits? Succession not the same here as in Denmark; nobody questions legitimacy here, not if you prove yourself. Ophelia is doing so, has done so. Acting madness was the best decision she ever made.


End file.
